Could we pull off a blue out?

I know blue outs were attempted probably 10 years ago and were pretty much a fail. Maize clearly pops more when the (majority) of the stadium wears it. Of course we've never really been able to accomplish a complete maize out, although the UTL games have been pretty close.

Since we're going to be wearing all blue for UTLIII, do you think a blue out gets attempted? If everyone wore blue and they handed out maize pom poms it would still look pretty cool.

I remember when we played Iowa at night in 2009 they did a blackout but gave out gold pom poms:

I was at last year's (and 2010) UM/PSU game in State College and I wasn't given a shirt. I did see a bunch around, so it wouldn't surprise me if there is a student organization that gives them to the student section, but it certainly wasn't available to everyone. My friends, of whom are PSU fans, purchased shirts and would have gladly accepted a free one. But, their solidarity to their program is really impressive. Maybe it's just an outsider looking in, but they all seem to be much more supportive whereas UM fans are never satisfied. It wouldn't surprise me if it's just much easier to get their fanbase to comply.

Yup I agree, and the thing I hate about the maize Adidas shirts, the climalite or w/e their thing is called, are easily see-through which annoys the crap out of me. I hate cotton type shirts and try and stay away from them as much as possible so the options for good maize shirts is very low with Adidas.

blue is really hard to pull off. I attended an attempted blue out at another stadium and even though almost everybody wore blue (like more even than wore maize at UTL), the stadium still looked like a pack of skittles.

Light colors are the only way to go unless you have a super crazy fanbase where even the old folks wear the right color. And even then it just makes the color of everyone's pants and whatnot stick out.

To pull it off at the same level that say Penn State does their white outs, i think they'd have to have about 50,000 or so blue shirts available for all the people that wouldn't come to the stadium wearing blue. Or whatever "color" out they decided to do.

This could be easily done, even if it's just a cheap piece of crap shirt. Just put some wording on it and give them out for free for one game, it would be a good thing to see and I bet with some sponsorships the cost for the athletic department would be close to none.

1. The other team tends to stand out more (OSU's red). In this case it's going to be PSU's white and the white and blue is going to look like PSU. Except for the maize pom poms you suggest.

2. If you pass out maize pom pom's, you've just turned it into a maize out...because that's all you'll see. Go look at UTL 1 and 2. Those weren't maized out, but the pom poms make it look like it.

...it's actually possible. Because neon colors were in...a "blue out" was pretty much EVERY Michigan home game. No one wore maize. Especially in the late fall when people broke out their jackets.

Proof? I just watched that 1995 OSU game and I've been watching all the classic 90s games and I actually noticed this yesterday. It was weird seeing the wide/blimp shots and seeing all blue in the stadium. I'm just so used to the maize now.

The problem was always that many of the other teams naturally had louder colors and they'd stand out. Then Michigan started struggling in the Tressel era and every year Michigan fans would sell their tickets to OSU fans. So by the early/mid-00s it would almost look like a 50/50 split.

Go back and look at the Tressel years (just the opening shot, not the games)...if anyone of you all remember back then, people were ALWAYS talking about OSU taking over Michigan Stadium and our fans selling our tickets. People begged others not to sell to OSU fans.

Then we started to move to maize as our primary color vs. blue and it hid the red much better. Now all you have to do is put out the maize pom poms in the big games and you pretty much win the battle of TV appearance because you don't have to worry about the navy jackets in the cold or anything like that...the maize is all you see.

Here's a DAY game, before the new scoreboards, before any pom poms, and the maize still stands out.

Yes, by far. White and a collage of other colors. That's just what people had. This was actually true at other stadiums, too--look at old games at places like Tennessee, LSU, pretty much anywhere. The modern trend of having everyone in a stadium wear one predominant color has gained steam in the last 20 years, but it isn't eternal.

It works best with teams that have one bright color and white. Tennessee became an all-orange experience effortlessly in the 90s, and Nebraska is very good at it.

Blue is a dark, background color. Other colors pop against it. There are no teams that I am aware of that successfully wear predominantly dark colors at home to every game--the closest you get is Texas A&M, but maroon still has some pop and they are another "color and white" team where you don't have a third color messing things up.

We should just go all out and make it a Stripe Out. Every section gets either a navy blue shirt and maize pom pom or Maize shirt and navy blue pom pom.

I really am joking, but since stripes are being forced upon us, might as well go all out and do something no one else is doing (to my knowledge). Instead of giving away free pom poms to trick the camera's into making people think everyone is wearing maize or in this case blue.

Our retinas are more tuned to yellow than blue. Blue cones make up a minority of our photoreceptors and seeing blue against a yellow background is actually pretty tough for our eyes to do. This is a partial explanation for why "blue outs" are difficult to accomplish because many of the other colors will pop out to our eyes in the sea of blue.